Five Reasons Why You’re in Facebook Jail

What do ad agencies NOT banned by Facebook have that your ad agency sometimes lacks? Costly Facebook bans raise ad costs when your funnel isn’t bringing in the moolah and you’re stuck in Facebook jail but don’t know why. Sound familiar?

The challenge is reading between the lines when you get a Facebook ad policy violation because the reasons often seem obscure. Which ad policy did you violate? Below I’ll explain the most common ad policy violations.

Facebook Ad Policy Violations

A ton of your Facebook ads have just been rejected! What do you do? Sweating, worried, you look at your account quality score but see more mean red little letters telling you that you’re in Facebook jail.

What does this even mean? Maybe it has some answers?! Except this metric won’t actually tell you which ad policy violations weigh more heavily than others.

Was there just one ad policy violation that was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Or was it a sum total of all of them adding up?

It was a landing page issue, no wait perhaps it was controversial content (what the fuck is that?), or wait..those damn social issue flags!

Want to make sure your landing page doesn’t get flagged by Facebook? Click here.

I’ve spent years working at Facebook (even before the special ad category was invented) and today I’ll be blogging about Five Reasons Why You’re in Facebook Jail and what to do about it.

But FIRST you need to know how Facebook thinks. If you don’t know how Facebook sees your ad, that is one of the reasons you’re in Facebook jail.

Why trust me over all the other blogs online? I’ve worked at Facebook in ads, and tech, and with the engineers at Meta.

Trevor W. Goodchild is for brands that need MAXIMUM accuracy.

10-20% off is a the difference of tens, hundreds or even millions.

When one word can get you banned, you can’t afford to guess.

Just like my client, Amazon Reality Show star Juanita Ingram of The Expats International Ingrams you’ll discover there are micro flags in ad copy and landing pages that have to be removed first before attempting to appeal or relaunch a brand with Facebook.

Want the same white glove treatment navigating Facebook shutdowns?

Click here, to schedule a discovery call to avoid getting a disabled Facebook ad account.

Reason 1: You Don’t Understand How Facebook’s Sees Facebook Ads [Ad Policy]

When you create ads but don’t understand how the platform sees those same ads you’ll end up in Facebook jail. How can you not? It’s like never running track but entering the Hunger Games.

BUT – after you familiarize yourself with how facebook sees Facebook ads, and what they want to see, the disconnect won’t be as bad.

So how does Facebook see ads?

Direct from the source, let’s start with Facebook’s positive user experience blurb:



The average advertiser will not be able to read between the lines here and grok how Facebook’s philosophy described above applies to your funnel and your ads. I’ll help explain. For my essential guide to Facebook ad policies click here.

“We want to help ensure that the ads don’t detract from the overall experience across our technologies.”

Marketers reading that often fail to connect the real meaning behind it to shape how they run ads and as a result, come off more click bait-y than intended, and end up in Facebook jail.

Perhaps your ad accounts in your Facebook Business Manager get disabled so now you try your personal ad account. Everything goes fine for a while then that gets disabled too. Now your profile get restricted from advertising as well.

WTF??

Reread that line above again. “We want to help ensure that the ads don’t detract from the overall experience.”

What is Facebook referring to with the overall experience?

Meta or Facebook is referring to the everyday journey of the average consumer, logging onto Facebook to check their notifications.

Catching up on relatives that live in another city, seeing the Facebook Business Pages they liked, scrolling the feed for updates from their friends and websites that post news updates – this is the overall experience.

In the middle are the sponsored posts many Facebook users barely notice or distinguish from the non-ad posts.

Now let’s step into the shoes of Facebook’s policies and review the bots that ban ya.

Reason #2: You’re in Facebook Jail Because of Automations

Facebook Ad Policy Progressive? Automations Are 1950s

If you want a persona, let’s look at Ward, from the hit series Leave It to Beaver.



Believe it or not, the way Facebook’s automations see Facebook posts very much align with 1950s conformism. And when they scan the Newsfeed for the Facebook ads that are running, if there is shocking content it will be removed.

For an in depth look at the top reasons why Facebook disables ad accountsclick here.

Can you imagine, Ward – the father figure in Leaves It to Beaver seeing an ad on Facebook that appeared too spammy or too sexual? An even sterner expression would be on his face. He’d be outraged to see this:


Admittedly the post above is pretty dated as you can see from the older build of Facebook’s platform but perhaps that fits this analogy of a 50s sitcom dad looking at your Facebook ad with scrutiny.

If your ad is too negative or too sexual it is going to get flagged and shut down, often without a specific explanation as to why. Because we are dealing with a very conservative Facebook 1950s sitcom dad automation.

So, don’t risk your revenue with guesses. If you want an escape plan from Facebook Jail, I’m like Michael Scofield with the blueprints for a way out.


Just like my client Darryl CEO of King Memory found out, and shared on LinkedIn there are specific ways to work with Facebook policies without losing conversions or getting stuck in Facebook jail:

Trevor W. Goodchild verifiably reveals what key metrics matter when staying out of Facebook jail. This means better more profitable decisions when ad buying and running campaigns. Schedule your discovery call now

How Facebook’s Core Values Shape Ad Policy Flagging

I’ll get to the Facebook ad policies you get flagged for most often soon enough. But it’s important not to skip this part because once you get how Facebook perceives ads this will help you reframe your ad copy and creative to be more compliant.

No, that doesn’t mean you can’t kick pain points or be negative sometimes to inspire FOMO, or the need for a solution to a problem, but it does mean considering Facebook ad policies first and then conversion elements for high converting Facebook ads.

So, one last time, let’s go back to Facebook’s ad policy philosophy of wanting to:

“…ensure that the ads don’t detract from the overall experience.”

If your ads are making Facebook users feel bad and they shoot a peace sign to the big FB, think about how many ads an average person sees in a day they won’t be seeing now. Are your Facebook ads blocked? Click here for expert guidance.

TLDR: If your Facebook ads are perceived as too sexual, too spammy, too clickbait-y, too misleading, too negative and Facebook users decide to get off Facebook, that’s a truckload of money you just took from Facebook.

Facebook will 😡 your ad now and remove it because you just lost them thousands of dollars because every single ad that Facebook user saw was paying Facebook money.

The kicker is Facebook has already told you this but, they have disguised these intentions behind generic wording to appear more consumer friendly (following their own policies of not being too shocking or negative). Full circle.

Now, let’s check out another Facebook ad policy violation that can put you in Facebook jail.

Reason # 3: You’re in Facebook Jail for Circumventing Systems

Is your patience running thin from random Facebook bans? You’re not alone! A Facebook ban that puts you in Facebook jail quite often is a Facebook flag that many don’t understand. I’ll share with you what it really means below:

Circumventing Systems in Facebook Ad Policy

In Facebook jail because of the Circumventing Systems flag? 10 million to one I can fix it. Facebook’s official explanation for that flag is essentially, “I pity the fool who thinks they can sneak around my policies.”



Ok ok, so the automations aren’t exactly as cool as Mr. T from the A-Team. But essentially that’s the external PR line that Facebook gives when you get that flag. But is this really what it means? Let’s look at 3 realistic scenarios for this flag:

•  Requesting people to DM you on an ad
•  Trying to run an ad again that was just rejected
•  Creating a new ad or ad account after shut downs

Keep in mind this is a relatively new Facebook flag that emerged late 2019ish in response to the 2019 lawsuit that waged war against real estate ads using income and zipcode targeting parameters (that lawsuit also led to the special ad categories filter).

If you are requesting folks to DM you on a Facebook (or especially an Instagram) ad Facebook will assume you are trying to get around paying for clicks and flag you for circumventing the system.

Reason # 4: You’re in Facebook Jail for Re-Submitting Rejected Ads Again

You just got a Facebook ad rejected? Oh shit! Let’s just try to run it again! That kind of dumb ass thinking is why you’re getting banned.

Sorry not sorry for being so in your face about it but I’ve seen this thousands of times from the thousands of ad agencies I’ve worked with over the years helping them get compliant. It’s the same story every time:

“We got our ad rejected from Facebook, didn’t know why, so we tried to run it again!”

This is one of the biggest triggers for Circumventing Systems flag!!

The logic is (and we are talking machine-logic) that Facebook assumes you are trying to get around their automations by sheer number of ads submitted even if these ads have flags you’d been previously shut down for.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a tactic that can work. Do I advise it? Hell no. Because eventually, when a new ad policy is distributed across the platform Facebook’s bots will rescan existing ads and shut you down.

Even if the ads you were running were compliant at the time they went live.

Big agencies, who run 100s of ads in an ad set will often try to just overwhelm the automations by submitting so many ads that a few slip through that are not compliant. Or a bunch slips through depending on the bandwidth of Facebook’s servers.

Even if you are a smaller SMB, Facebook will assume that by resubmitting the same ad with the same flags again, that you are trying this tactic and that’s when you get hit with the Circumventing Systems flag.

The fix? Just don’t resubmit a rejected Facebook ad before finding out WHY it was rejected FIRST. And I can help with that. Want a free discovery call to see if I can help get your Facebook ads live again? Schedule your call here.

You’re in Facebook Jail for a Failed Relaunch

Creating a New Ad Account or FB Page After Shutdowns

Now you’re like, ok, well, shoot, I’ll just make a new ad account. I’ll just make a new Facebook Business Page after my last one was restricted.

Well…you are in for a ride. There’s a 50/50 chance Facebook could miss this and your ads get live again. This will depend on the amount of traffic to the servers, how many ads are getting rejected and your personal history of rejections verses approvals.

But, more often than not, Facebook sees this attempt as a way of sneaking around their ad policies and will shut you down again. Except now, you are defined as a bad character, internally, and maybe your profile gets restricted from advertising.

Your Facebook Profile remember is not a Facebook Business Page – it’s all your personal profile page stuff with your picture and your friends on it. You have to have a Profile to create a Business Manager and advertise on Ads Manager.

That’s one key to many doors, now revoked. But, there is one last confusing ass reason you get the Circumventing Systems flag. One that really gets advertisers nerves in a jumble when seeing those ominous red letters in Ads Manager:

The X-Factor of Facebook Ad Policy

Facebook will often just slap the Circumventing Systems and disable ad accounts if they know you are violating ad policies, but can’t decide which one to use to shut you down with.

So in a sense, it becomes a header flag. An umbrella flag under which your actual Facebook ad policy violation flag sits. But, of course they won’t tell you about it.

Half the time they don’t know themselves because this shit is automated!

In order to solve that, you have to determine which flag triggered the Circumventing Systems flag, understanding that you aren’t actually being flagged for trying to sneak around their ad policies, but something else entirely.

My advice is to audit your funnel and determine which flags you have had recently that weighed the most heavily and triggered the circumventing systems flag before it gets to be too late and your ad assets are frozen.

Let’s now discuss Reason #5 for Facebook ad policy violations that’ll get you thrown in Facebook jail: Misleading Business Practices aka Unacceptable Business Practices flag. 

Reason #5: You’re in Facebook Jail for Unacceptable Business Practices 

Remember Circumventing Systems as a header flag for a litany of unrelated flags? Same thing here.

You gotta keep in mind a lot of shit is unacceptable to Facebook.

When you get flagged for an unacceptable business practice ad it could be 1 of 3 main header flags:

• Spam
• Unrealistic Claims
• MLM

Also, this flag is known as Misleading Business Practices.

I go into a lot more detail on Spam flags in my blog post Top 5 Reasons Why Facebook Ads Get Rejected, so peep that out for more details.

Remember when I mentioned the big promises of clickbait ads? This is kind of like a clickbait-lite flag. Facebook doesn’t come down as harshly most of the time for unrealistic claims unless you just have a whole bunch of them in a row.

Or, you just sound like a lunatic with something like “Lose 100lbs in 5 days with this new weight loss program.”

Are you starting to see how within the Facebook ecosystem, many of these flags are connected?

Clickbait flags are connected (but aren’t the same thing) as Unrealistic Claims. Circumventing Systems are connected to Unrealistic Claims (but aren’t the same) in both being header flags sometimes for unrelated ad policy violations.

MLM flags usually have to do with, although not exclusively, money. Talking about how much money you can make people online is a dangerous topic to approach given these MLM flags.

Do you want to spend 200 hours researching all the ways your ads could get flagged or would you rather just have instant answers within 60 minutes for exactly why your Facebook ads are getting flagged?

I’ve worked with celebrities, influencers, written for and consulted major social media publications and can help prevent you from getting the ban hammer. Keep reading for more info:

Five Reasons Why You’re in Facebook Jail Solution

I’ve worked at Facebook in ads, tech and project management, and my zone of genius is helping ad agencies get Facebook ads live again and preventing future shut downs. 

Facebook Ad Policy Ban Fix

A full customer life cycle and cost are critical to getting true profit from your marketing, and Facebook bans are costly.

I’ll review your funnel and FULL cost of Facebook jail, letting you see the EXACT cause of FB bans and how to fix them to IMPROVE your immediate ad & marketing results and get ads live again.

Are you going to trust random articles online or someone like me, who has worked at Meta?

I’m trusted by high level brands that take accuracy and results seriously:

I can show you how to resolve FB bans even if Facebook won’t, and solve issues like advertising access permanently restricted.

Schedule a call with me and learn how to stop the domino effect when Facebook starts banning your entire funnel after a simple ad rejection.

Don’t take my word for it, let my clients tell you what it was like working with me.


My clients have included the social media marketing agencies of Tony Robbins, Harv Eker, and Dean Graziosi. How much is it costing you to not know why Facebook is shutting you down? Talk today. 



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